FINDING YOUR FAMILY
AMONG THE SAINTS
Surety Alan James Koman was scheduled to tell us about his new book, “A Who’s Who of Your Ancestral Saints,” at this year’s Annual BOMC-MOC Breakfast in Washington, DC. Regrettably, he broke his foot and could not attend. His remarks were read by our Genealogist, Timothy Field Beard.
GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE. I’m Alan Koman. In a few minutes today, I’d like to tell you about a new book from the Genealogical Publishing Company that may contain some very good news for you.
In it, there are short chapters about 275 real men and women who lived and died in the 10 centuries from around 300 A.D. to 1300 A.D.
In it, there are also lineages for each of those men and women that will allow anyone today with genealogical links to the royalty or nobility of medieval Britain to claim many or even all of them as ancestors.
How eager any student of genealogy may be to do this depends on how that student answers just one question.
Among those who have died, is there anyone who takes requests for help made by the living and presents them directly to God?
Anyone who thinks this definitely does not occur in the realm beyond the grave should stop listening to me now. I won’t be saying anything of the slightest interest to you.
Anyone who thinks this happens all the time might be glad they came today.
Anyone who hopes this happens but isn’t exactly sure might be right on the point of acquiring a few hundred fascinating new friends and allies in all struggles.
In Christianity, these 275 men and women are called saints. Their role as intercessors between the living and the Divine has been recognized from the earliest days of the faith. What has changed and evolved in the last 2,000 years is the process by which they are recognized.
Let’s turn for a moment to the history of that process. I would like to give you the shortest account of it that you will ever hear.
The very first saints of the new Christian church were Mary, John the Baptist, and 11 of the original 12 Apostles. Of these 13 people, Mary and the Apostle John were the only two who dies of natural causes in their old age. Of the others (Luke 6: 12-16):
John the Baptist – beheaded
Peter – crucified
Andrew – crucified
James the Great – killed, perhaps beheaded, perhaps stoned to death
James the Less – killed, perhaps clubbed to death
Philip – crucified
Bartholomew – killed, perhaps skinned alive
Matthew – killed, means unknown
Thomas – killed, perhaps with a spear
Jede, a.k.a. Thaddeus – killed, perhaps clubbed to death
Simon “the Zealot” – killed, perhaps crucified, perhaps sawed to pieces
Anyone whose life ends in martyrdom is recognized as a saint. That has been true from the earliest days of Christianity. It is still true today.
“Recognition” that someone is a saint – during the centuries of persecution by the Romans – meant that your mortal remains would be laid to rest in a specially marked grave and that other Christians would gather at your grave from time to time to honor your memory and ask for help in their own struggles to survive in an extraordinarily hostile world. During this era – while Christianity was still in the catacombs – the core elements of the process by which real men and women were recognized as saints were all established. Your own spiritual heroism – your bravery in the face of death – was recognized by the other Christians who survived you. Your remains were revered, and every measure was used to preserve them. Your survivors were certain that in the next world you were right next to God. When they desperately needed some sort of help, they thought that you would be able to get it for them. The recognition of new saints is something that has always started at the grass roots of our religion, among the faithful, who are certain that God in His infinite justice esteems their departed friend just as much as they do.
The thought that recognition as a saint should be based on spiritual heroism lived on after the Roman persecutions finally ended. The more perfectly someone’s response to the hardships that he faced exemplified the Christian virtues, the more heroic he was in the opinion of his fellow Christians. If someone’s heroism was really exceptional, his survivors recognized him as a saint, even though his life had not ended in martyrdom. This form of recognition also started at the grass roots, among the faithful.
As the Roman era ended and the Dark Ages began, the number of saints recognized by communities of the faithful continued to grow. Very gradually, bishops across Europe began to require that written and convincing accounts of someone’s life and holiness by presented to them by anyone who hoped to have a departed spiritual hero recognized as a saint. The reburial of your remains in a specially marked grave – often inside a church and perhaps next to or even under the altar – had to wait until the bishop was as ready to recognize your sanctity as your own survivors were.
This slightly formalized method of recognizing saints was followed everywhere in Europe for the rest of the first millennium and beyond. On questions of recognition, no bishop was superior to any other. Outside of the areas where they had actually lived, new saints might be and often were completely unknown. No complex systems of rules for recognition have come down to us, because there were none. In faraway Rome, neither the pope nor his cardinals or other servants ever became involved in any way.
The involvement of the papacy in the recognition of saints did begin around the end of the first millennium and was at first just an additional way that a saint could be recognized. When it began, no one saw it as replacing the process of local recognition by bishops that had been followed throughout Europe for centuries. Ultimately, of course, the recognition of new saints became a decision for the pope alone. Bishops no longer officially recognized the holiness of any new member of the kingdom of Heaven unless Rome had done so first. This papal monopoly was itself not universally recognized in the Western Church until the Middle Ages were almost over. Even then, no one thought that the earlier saints who had been recognized only by the bishops or the people had lost any of their status or required “re-canonization” by the pope.
Only God knows how many saints there are. All the Catholic Church has ever claimed is the ability to recognize whether someone is a saint. Even then, one would search in vain for one big book or a series of books containing the names of all the saints that have ever been recognized by the Church.
Who are the saints you’ll find in my book? Geographically, they come from a vast area.
From Armenia, there are 12
From Austria, 1.
From Belgium, 1.
From Bulgaria, 1.
From Constantinople, 7.
From the Czech Republic(f.k.a., Bohemia), 4.
From Denmark, 1.
From England, 49.
From France, 90.
From Germany, 33.
From Hungary, 8.
From Ireland, 5.
From Italy, 7.
From Luxemburg, 1.
From Norway, 1.
From Russia, 14.
From Scotland, 8.
From Spain, 13.
From Sweden, 3.
And from Wales, 16.
For a grand total of 275. Of these, 122 are direct ancestors of a vast number of people who are alive today. The other 153 have no direct descendants, but they are aunts and uncles to more people today than there are grains of sand on the seashore.
As startling as the prospect of 275 saints in the family tree may be, there are many more than that in the kingdom of Heaven that can’t be connected by scholarship to anyone who is alive today but who could easily be your direct or collateral ancestors nevertheless. A complete overview or exact total of all the people recognized as holy by the Christian churches in the last 2,000 years will never be written. The largest catalog published to date appeared in the middle of the 20th century, contained about 10,000 names and didn’t claim to be complete. Even if there was one very long scroll with the name of every man and woman who had ever been venerated by Christians, it would still not have the names of all those other saints known only to God.
Is anyone in the audience beginning to feel like they are being watched?
Is anyone in the audience beginning to want to know exactly who is looking at them ??
I thought so.
Full details about the first 275 members of the kingdom of Heaven who are watching you are available in the only book yet written about all of them. Here are closer looks at twelve of the faces in that crowd who are all watching you.
From Armenia, there is St. Gregory the Illuminator. After imprisoning Gregory and continuing to persecute Christians, the pagan king of Armenia went mad one day. All remedies failed until the king’s sister had Gregory brought up from his cell. After Gregory laid his hands on the king and prayed, the king was cured. He converted to Christianity, Gregory became the country’s first bishop, and since all this happened in 301 and 302,Armenia became the world’s first Christian nation.
From the Czech Republic, there is St. Wenceslaus. Struggling to encourage Christian conversion in his country while pagan members of his own family were trying to snuff the new religion out, Wenceslaus accepted the invitation of a pagan brother to come celebrate a Christian feast. After he greeted his brother and started walking to church, Wenceslaus was murdered by his brother’s men. As he lay dying, he forgave everyone who played a part in his death and is remembered today in the Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslaus.”
Among the 49 English saints, you’ll find Alfred the Great. Why is he called “the Great”? When he was crowned in 871, his realm of Wessex was the last kingdom in England that hadn’t been conquered by Vikings, and half of its towns had already been burned to ashes. In almost a year of battles, he fought the Vikings to a standstill. He then bought five years of peace and spent that time tirelessly building up the Wessex war machine. Then the Vikings returned, and for two years there were several battles. At Ethandune in 878, Alfred’s total victory over them ended the war. The Vikings then stayed away for 15 years, and when they invaded one more time in 893, Alfred’s power was so great that all the Northmen could do was to burn a few villages, and in the end their army simply melted away.
But for Alfred, his people would have become the chattels of pagan conquerors. In peacetime, he gave his people a new code of laws and public schools. He was also generous to the Church. Personally, Alfred was a deeply pious man who went to mass every day. He was hailed as a model Christian ruler and called “the Saviour of the Saxons.” Among all the other Saxon kings in Britain, he has no rival.
From England, you’ll also see St. Bathildis. Kidnapped and taken across the Channel, she was sold as a slave in Dark Ages France. She made such an impression on Clovis II that he married her and made her his queen. She freed many slaves, fostered Christianity, and after Clovis died became the de facto ruler of his country for several years. Once their oldest son came of age, she became a nun and spent the rest of her life refusing all honors and privileges and doing very menial work. As I did my research, I didn’t find anyone else who rose from slavery to become first a queen and then a saint.
Saints from France fill almost one-third of my book. Among the Frenchmen who are watching you, there is St. William of Gellone. As a leader of Charlemagne’s armies, he knew how to fight and was never beaten. His personal conduct was so exemplary that he was hailed by many as an ideal Christian knight. In old age, he founded a monastery, became a monk there, and never left. Through his father, he may also have a line back to King David, King Solomon, and several of their successors in ancient Israel, but that is a scholarly war that is still being fought.
Towering like Everest among your French saints is St. Bernard of Clairvaux. According to Luther, the greatest of all the fathers of the Church. Through his leadership, the Cistercians became one of the major monastic orders of the Middle Ages. After he noticed a tiny order founded by 9 knights in Jerusalem in 1119, he got papal recognition for that order, became a very active recruiter for it, and was therefore present at the creation of the Knights Templar. He spent almost 40 years counseling kings and popes. You can turn his written work into your PhD thesis. There are the several treatises he wrote, more than 300 sermons, and more than 500 letters, all waiting for you. In the 12th century, he was the leading personality in the western Church.
Want to read a story that you will never stop thinking about? Consider the life of Odilia. The blind daughter born to a Dark Ages ruler in France, she was almost put outside to die from exposure until her father agreed that she could be raised by peasants, but only if no one was ever told whose child she was. After she was taken to a convent at age 12, the nuns were told that she had never been baptized. When the local bishop touched her eyes with holy oil, she opened them and could see! She became a nun, an abbess, and a very popular saint.
Turning from France to Germany, there is Ulric of Augsburg. Imagine our actual battle of the Alamo. Imagine that Davy Crockett and the other defenders not only fought off all the Mexican attacks but joined Sam Houston’s army (that had arrived just in the nick of time), chased the fleeing Mexicans, and killed them almost to the last man. That’s what Ulric did, except the time was August 955 and the place was the battle of Lechfeld.
Want to reach for another handkerchief? Read about St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The daughter of a king and the child bride of a duke, when her husband died from the plague after setting out on the Sixth Crusade, she and her children were cast out into the cold by her wicked in-laws. Already known for notable acts of charity – such as giving away her own food to the poor – she and her children spent a long winter in utter destitution, to the point of sleeping on the floor in parish churches. After finally placing her children in monasteries and convents, she opened a small hospital, nursed the sick, cleaned the houses of the poor, and supported herself by spinning. At age 24, she died of exhaustion and malnutrition and was immediately hailed as a saint.
Enjoy a mystery? Among the Italians, read about St. Peter Orseolo I. As admiral of the Venetian fleet, he fought several battles against pirates and won. Becoming Doge during a time of political crisis, he began rebuilding the parts of Venice that had been destroyed in a great fire. He also stabilized the government that was close to collapsing. After a two0year reign, he disappeared one night only to turn up months later at a monastery in the Pyreneesas a monk doing menial work and giving himself severe penances. He died a hermit and is the only canonized Doge of Venice. His son Doge Peter Orseolo II is remembered as the real founder of the Venetian state.
Among the Spanish saints, the importance of Blessed Blanche of Castile cannot be overstated. When her husband Louis VIII died in 1226, Blanche suddenly became the de facto ruler of France. A beautiful, loving, and very spiritual mother, she was equally astute as an administrator, a politician, and a military leader. She put down many revolts by nobles who seriously underestimated her. Once her oldest son began to rule in his own right, she became his most trusted counselor. After he left on Crusade, she once again ruled the country in his absence for four more years until she died. With anyone else for a mother, her son Louis would only be remembered today as a child-king overthrown during his minority and would never have become St. Louis.
In the era of the Crusades, the most successful Crusader of them all did not fight in Palestine but in Spain. This is St. Fernando, the greatest figure of the Spanish Reconquest. During almost 30 years of war with the Moors, he reconquered more Spanish territory than all his predecessors put together. Like the Europeans fighting in the holy Land, Fernando and his men had received the Crusader’s indulgence. Unlike the Europeans in the East, their victories were permanent. None of the territory they liberated was ever retaken by the Moslems.
As you become more acquainted with all of your new relations in the kingdom of Heaven, how may your own life begin to change? There are a number of things that might happen.
You might be happy. Who would not be happy to learn that he had this many relatives standing right next to God?
The part of your home devoted to your library might start to take over your whole house. To feed your new scholarly interests, books might become your gift of choice for the rest of your life. To name but one of the new subjects that might bewitch you, 37 of the saints in my book are warrior saints, men whose deeds of arms were victories for Christianity. Who would not want to know everything about them?
You might need to start taking more vacations than you do now. What may you be going to see? Perhaps the final resting places of your ancestral saints, or perhaps all the other cathedrals, churches, and holy places that have been dedicated to their memory.
At home, you might adopt a whole new way of marking many days of the year. Saints usually have feast days. They are usually the day they died – it it is known – or a day established by custom, if it is not. Your calendar will start filling up fast with lots of special occasions. How many parties would you like to have?
If you’re Catholic, you will probably remember that there are several ways to obtain a plenary indulgence. One of them is to find a church named for a particular saint, to go to that church on that saint’s feast day, and to say the Apostles’ Creed and the Our Father. If you also satisfy a few general, purely spiritual requirements, then all discomfort waiting for you in the next world because of what you have done in this one is wiped away. At that moment, you could enter Paradise. For details, see the Enchiridion of Indulgences published in book form in 1969 or the much more user-friendly book by Edward Peters, A Modern Guide to Indulgences.
And there’s one more thing, which can’t be promised to you but which – with all the other windows you’ll be opening to let in the light that never goes out – might happen at a moment when you least expect it. You may see something happen here on earth that could only be brought about by God Himself. Or in other words, a miracle.
Full details about the first 275 members of the kingdom of Heaven who are watching you are available in the only book yet written about all of them. Here are closer looks at twelve of the faces in that crowd who are all watching you.
From Armenia, there is St. Gregory the Illuminator. After imprisoning Gregory and continuing to persecute Christians, the pagan king of Armenia went mad one day. All remedies failed until the king’s sister had Gregory brought up from his cell. After Gregory laid his hands on the king and prayed, the king was cured. He converted to Christianity, Gregory became the country’s first bishop, and since all this happened in 301 and 302, Armenia became the world’s first Christian nation.
From the Czech Republic, there is St. Wenceslaus. Struggling to encourage Christian conversion in his country while pagan members of his own family were trying to snuff the new religion out, Wenceslaus accepted the invitation of a pagan brother to come celebrate a Christian feast. After he greeted his brother and started walking to church, Wenceslaus was murdered by his brother’s men. As he lay dying, he forgave everyone who played a part in his death and is remembered today in the Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslaus.”
Among the 49 English saints, you’ll find Alfred the Great. Why is he called “the Great”? When he was crowned in 871, his realm of Wessex was the last kingdom in England that hadn’t been conquered by Vikings, and half of its towns had already been burned to ashes. In almost a year of battles, he fought the Vikings to a standstill. He then bought five years of peace and spent that time tirelessly building up the Wessex war machine. Then the Vikings returned, and for two years there were several battles. At Ethandune in 878, Alfred’s total victory over them ended the war. The Vikings then stayed away for 15 years, and when they invaded one more time in 893, Alfred’s power was so great that all the Northmen could do was to burn a few villages, and in the end their army simply melted away.
But for Alfred, his people would have become the chattels of pagan conquerors. In peacetime, he gave his people a new code of laws and public schools. He was also generous to the Church. Personally, Alfred was a deeply pious man who went to mass every day. He was hailed as a model Christian ruler and called “the Saviour of the Saxons.” Among all the other Saxon kings in Britain, he has no rival.
From England, you’ll also see St. Bathildis. Kidnapped and taken across the Channel, she was sold as a slave in Dark Ages France. She made such an impression on Clovis II that he married her and made her his queen. She freed many slaves, fostered Christianity, and after Clovis died became the de facto ruler of his country for several years. Once their oldest son came of age, she became a nun and spent the rest of her life refusing all honors and privileges and doing very menial work. As I did my research, I didn’t find anyone else who rose from slavery to become first a queen and then a saint.
Saints from France fill almost one-third of my book. Among the Frenchmen who are watching you, there is St. William of Gellone. As a leader of Charlemagne’s armies, he knew how to fight and was never beaten. His personal conduct was so exemplary that he was hailed by many as an ideal Christian knight. In old age, he founded a monastery, became a monk.